The most revealing scene in El Cantante, an almost thoroughly forgettable biopic of the late salsa pioneer Héctor Lavoe (Marc Anthony), features Jennifer Lopez shaking her booty in her man's face.

Starring Marc Anthony, Jennifer Lopez, John Ortiz and Manny Perez. Written by Leon Ichaso, David Darmstaeder and Todd Anthony. Directed by Leon Ichaso. 106 minutes. At the Varsity. 14A

At the risk of raising unwarranted expectations, it must be pointed out that the most revealing scene in El Cantante, an almost thoroughly forgettable biopic of the late salsa pioneer Héctor Lavoe (Marc Anthony), features Jennifer Lopez shaking her booty in her man's face.

The context is this: the Puerto Rican-born Héctor, whose career is taking off at precisely the same velocity as his appetite for powder, is trying to watch TV in the new Manhattan apartment he's just purchased for himself and his shrill but loving wife Puchi (Lopez). But Puchi's butt keeps getting in the way. Deliberately. She wants him to look at her butt – and nothing else. And so she blocks out the man's vision of anything that is not her butt. This, in what I hesitate to call a nutshell, is all you really need to know about El Cantante. It does for our understanding of Lavoe's music what Puchi's butt does for Lavoe.

There are many things that are wrong with El Cantante – things like anemic characterization and context, mercilessly overedited musical sequences and the depiction of Lavoe in purely movie-cliché junkie terms – but nothing stands in the way of it being even halfway tolerable as much as producer-star Lopez.

Whether she's constantly present off or onstage, or whether intruding upon what scant narrative exists in the form of howlingly phony black-and-white interview sequences with the "older" Puchi, Lopez is inescapable. (You could make a drinking game out of her intrusions, but you'd probably risk expiring of alcohol poisoning if you did.)

It's almost as if she resents the fact the movie isn't supposed to be about her almost as much as Puchi apparently resented her time-sharing with her husband's stardom, and the end result is no mean feat of spoiled-star hijacking. This may be one of the very few biopics in which the subject is marginalized to the point of irrelevance.

As that booty blackout moment makes plain, this isn't the story of Héctor Lavoe, it's a form of lunar eclipse.

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